Tag Archives: journalism

Summary: Telling the public about climate change is among the most difficult challenges for journalists, ever. Complex, rapidly changing, no consensus among scientists beyond a few basics about mechanisms and history, and highly politicized. Here we look at two examples, good and not-so-good. These show progress, and also how the Left’s dogmatic adherence to its narrative has forced them to abandon science (a commonplace in history for both Left and Right).

Community Climate System Model

(1) Good journalism

They accurately report two studies. They quote scientists — not activists. They often put things in context. Most important, they break the Left’s narrative of denying the pause, which for several years been one of the hot topics in climate science.

Roberts told Quartz that this all suggests our current warming pause is unique, but, despite the low probability, it is also “very possible” that the pause could continue a few more years. And that wouldn’t be inconsistent with what we know about the effects of the heat-trapping ocean oscillations at work in the Science study.

… >Some even say that 2014, the hottest year on record, already marked the end of the hiatus. But Roberts of the Met Office advised caution before calling it officially off. “I would argue that we need a run of several unusually warm years to be able to definitively identify the end,” he said.

All of the researchers who spoke to Quartz about the two studies agreed that the warming pause was just that. “Eventually we expect temperatures to ‘catch up,’ but it may take longer than five years for that to happen,” Roberts told Quartz.

The article’s overall frame is, however, incorrect. Individual scientists have theories about the cause(s) of the pause. But there is as yet no consensus on this. See for yourself by reading abstracts of (and links to) 37 articles describing of the major 12 theories about causes of the pause, many by leaders in this field.

Summary: Hot stories like North Korea’s (alleged) attack on Sony show how the government officials and journalists shape our opinions. Open source information and analysis can provide alternative perspectives, helping us better understand our world. But this, by itself, provides only better entertainment unless we act upon it. We can learn to do better by learning from these events, a necessity for those seeking to reform America from the plutocracy it’s becoming. This is the 4th post in this series about the Sony hack; see links to the others at the end.

The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.

(1) Why the government wins these debates

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“I have seen too many situations where government officials claimed a high degree of confidence as to the source, intent, and scope of an attack, and it turned out they were wrong on every aspect of it. That is, they were often wrong, but never in doubt.”

Open source provides an alternative to government pronouncements, but it’s useless information since we have no mechanisms to use it.

US experts tend to treat US government official’s words — even when anonymous — as gospel. National security and geopolitical experts are especially obedient (as economists are to the Fed, for similar reasons). That’s important, since experts provide the analysis which the news media features to explain events. As we see in other issues (e.g., climate change from 1989 until after 2010), journalists acts as gatekeepers to the mass mind. They filter what we learn to maintain the narrative. No matter how qualified the expert, journalists will mute voices dissenting from the narrative — unless powerful political interests intervene (as the GOP has, highlighting the views of skeptical scientists in the climate wars).

The government wins because they overwhelm the news flow, and confusion about complex matters forces people to trust somebody. And a majority reliably will decide to do nothing, and let the government handle it. Our only recourse is to find people whom we can trust for reliable information and analysis, no matter how unpalatable.

(2) Journalists struggle to understand the hack

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Here are some of the most interesting bits from the flood of propaganda, noise, and information about the Sony hack.

Here’s a fascinating dissection of an early New York Times story about the hack, by the pseudonymous “Jericho”: “Anatomy of a NYT Piece on the Sony Hack and Attribution“, 19 December 2014. It shows the skill journalists use to create the shiny narratives that package information for us.

“Was North Korea behind the Sony hack? Not all experts agree.“, Christian Science Monitor, 22 December 2014 — “Some cyber specialists aren’t convinced that North Korea was the culprit. One critic calls the the FBI’s evidence ‘weak’ and ‘at best, speculation.’ Others back the FBI claims.” Pro-FBI article pretending to be skeptical.

“In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if, in tempestous seasons, they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”
— John Maynard Keynes in A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. … Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.”
— John F. Kennedy’s Acceptance Speech, 15 July 1960

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Dreams of a Third Industrial Revolution

Although its effects remain uncertain, by now any who look can see that the Third Industrial Revolution has begun. Like the others, it will reshape society. Power and wealth go to those who manage these changes.

We’re at the stage when pundits work to actively hide the obvious implications, to forestall public policy action to mitigate the damage to vulnerable — and prevent the 1% from grabbing all the gains. A tweetstorms tweets by Silicon Valley’s Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) shows how it’s done. He ignores what we’ve learned from the past, shifts the focus from obvious dangers to strawmen, and looks to the smooth waters at the end (ignoring the rapids and falls of the passage ahead).

Summary: We have little confidence in journalists, although they have warned us well of past perils. Now a new challenge arrives, the 3rd industrial revolution. We refuse to prepare for its dangers. Here we review some of the many news articles about what’s happening, so we cannot say we weren’t warned.

The last office worker

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Contents

Journalists report, but we don’t listen

Journalists report: long-form analysis

The daily news tells the story, in chapters

For More Information

The Robot bedmate is coming

(1) Journalists report, but we don’t listen

We have low confidence in the news media (see Gallup’s Confidence in Institutions Poll), but perhaps the fault lies in the audience as much as the journalists. Nothing demonstrates our broken OODA loop (observation-orientation-decision-action process) as vividly as our inability to see what journalists tell us.

Our invasion and occupation of Iraq began with lies; it ended with our ignominious eviction — having accomplished nothing of value to the US. Journalists reported each step of our folly (amidst much chaff from the hawks). Yet three years later many American remain unaware of these — often belligerently holding to their lies and myths.

So it also goes with climate change. The pause in warming of the atmosphere since roughly 2000 has been reported by journalists (fitfully, amidst much chaff from alarmists), telling us about its recognition by climate scientists (followed by their research into its causes and likely duration).

In both cases journalists reported both the key information, and the chaff by activists seeking to conceal this information. As citizens, consumers of news, we have a responsibility to sort the news to see the facts, not just whine that we were misled. Now this information cycle begins again with the start of a third industrial, widespread automation of white-collar jobs.

(2) Journalists report: long-form analysis

Here are articles about the great changes about to come, reshaping America. Everybody will be affected, even professionals who smirk at job losses in the lower class. Astonishing changes. But not so amazing as our blindness to them, even as the clock already runs.

Summary: We have magnitudes greater access to information and analysis than any previous generation. Yet a look at the comments section of any website quickly shows that the information highway runs in vain. A reader asks how can we do better?

“Nietzsche said the newspaper had replaced the prayer in the life of the modern bourgeois, meaning that the busy, the cheap, the ephemeral, had usurped all that remained of the eternal in his daily life.”
— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1988)

“News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising.”
— attributed to Alfred C. Harmsworth (1865–1922), British newspaper magnate

Contents

A serious problem of our time

Don’t listen to amateur analysis

Start with the views of major institutions

About government agencies & NGOs

There is always another side

Check the history of the experts you rely upon

How to follow an issue

The big challenge

What can you do to make a difference?

(1) Email from a reader about a serious problem of our time

I have been spending the past few days reading posts as well as comments, and cannot help but feel jaded from the divide I see between your strong opposing forces.

I am disillusioned and not sure what to believe now of the scientific community. I always thought there was a dignified but unified dialogue between educated individuals. I can see now that even the peer reviewed journals that I trusted can be interpreted any which way. My question is – how do I, as a concerned American and student, cut through the noise to the raw data?

(2) Don’t listen to amateur analysis

It might be correct, but you and I — as laypeople — cannot tell fact from fiction. Journalism differs from amateur analysis; it reports the analysis of experts (rather than the reporter doing his own).

(3) Start with the views of major institutions

You’ll often need to dig, since activists often work to mask more authoritative views. An journalists often highlight activists, with their vivid confident messages, over the grey but solid information from relevant institutions. The views of institutions is seldom definitive, and often wrong; but these are the sources to base your learning upon.

That’s true in the climate wars. For climate change, we have the work of the IPCC, UK Met Office, NOAA, etc. They’re expanded their outreach programs, becoming both relevant and easy to understand. Unfortunately, both Left and Right have abandoned them as insufficiently alarmist and politically inconvenient. They make guest appearances, like the Pope, as useful; but both tend to rely on other sources for analysis and prediction.

Summary: Let’s review the story that today set Twitter afire with panic about global warming. It’s a story of science, skillful writing, and a very gullible America. The 21st century might prove unpleasant for America unless we tighten our game.

See and freak out! Click to enlarge.

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Contents

NASA’s photo of the Day

Plaiting the facts

One step more, into agitprop

The rest of the story about warming Alaska

For More Information

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(1) NASA’s photo of the Day

Let’s review the story that today set Twitter afire with panic about global warming. But first let’s rewind the tape to see the source of the story.

On most days, relentless rivers of clouds wash over Alaska, obscuring most of the state’s 6,640 miles (10,690 kilometers) of coastline and 586,000 square miles (1,518,000 square kilometers) of land. The south coast of Alaska even has the dubious distinction of being the cloudiest region of the United States, with some locations averaging more than 340 cloudy days per year.

That was certainly not the case on June 17, 2013, the date that the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this rare, nearly cloud-free view of the state. The absence of clouds exposed a striking tapestry of water, ice, land, forests, and even wildfires.

… The same ridge of high pressure that cleared Alaska’s skies also brought stifling temperatures to many areas accustomed to chilly June days. Talkeetna, a town about 100 miles north of Anchorage, saw temperatures reach 96°F (36°C) on June 17. Other towns in southern Alaska set all-time record highs, including Cordova, Valez, and Seward. The high temperatures also helped fuel wildfires and hastened the breakup of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea.

(2) Plaiting the facts

Nothing remarkable in this story. But in the hands of skilled alarmists it becomes: “A Clear View of Alaska — and Maybe Our Future“, Phil Plait, Slate, 20 June 2013. Plait is an astronomer who worked for 10 years on Hubble Space Telescope data, and now writes about science — with a side line in climate alarmism (e.g., calling people “deniers” who cite science research he doesn’t like). Plait connects the NASA story with some current research, ignores contrary research, and produces a standard example of climate propaganda.

Summary: Two recent new articles revisit a sad story from our past. Gary Webb had a distinguished career in journalism, until his series in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA’s involvement in smuggling drugs into America. What happened afterwards tells us much about America. We’re ignorant because we have the news media we deserve, since we do not appreciate or protect whistleblowers and journalists who tell us unpleasant truths. This leaves them vulnerable to attack by powerful interest groups. It’s a story of America’s decline.

Some journalists are better than we deserve

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Contents

Webb’s allegations about the CIA

The Empire strikes back

Conclusions

For More Information about the CIA

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(1) Webb’s allegations about the CIA

Urban legends that circulate to this day that the CIA created and profited from the crack epidemic that devastated our inner cities in the 1980s.There was an element of truth in these allegations, with their origin in a 1996 series of articles by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News. They had a core of truth, but were wildly exaggerated. For details see:

Fast, open and thorough investigations could have shown the small CIA involvement in drug smuggling (their dirty work prevents them from working only with nice people). Eventually investigations did so with varying degrees of credibility.

But that’s not our government’s way. One way or another steps were taken to ruin Webb’s career. Perhaps by coincidence, Webb’s accusations against the government received massive investigations by major newspaper, which they never given to investigations of government iniquity.

“Dark Alliance” blew the lid off the CIA’s ties to America’s crack market by showing for the first time not just the agency’s role in turning a blind eye to Nicaraguan contras smuggling cocaine to the United States but also vividly illustrating the role of that cocaine in the spread — via marketers like Ross — of crack in America’s inner cities.

The movie will portray Webb as a courageous reporter whose career and life were cut short when the nation’s three most powerful newspapers piled on to attack Webb and his three-part Mercury News series on the CIA’s crack-cocaine connection.

The New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times each obscured basic truths of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series. But no newspaper tried harder than the L.A. Times, where editors were said to have been appalled that a distant San Jose daily had published a blockbuster about America’s most powerful spy agency and its possible role in allowing drug dealers to flood South L.A. with crack.

“Seeing the Gray in ‘Dark Alliance’“, Los Angeles Magazine, 6 June 2013 — “Jesse Katz on the life and death and Hollywood resurrection of Gary Webb, the reporter who linked the CIA to the crack epidemic.” Excerpt: